About an hour after they stole the RV, she got to see one of those ferry terminals. Albeit dimly. It was long after dark. The terminal was closed. The lights—if there were any—had been turned off. Jones switched off the RV’s headlamps as they cruised past a sign warning them that there’d be no more sailings until six A.M. tomorrow morning. A moment later, the Suburban went dark too. They felt their way down the ramp by starlight. It was just a straight gash blasted through the woods down to the shore of the lake. It ramped straight into black water. The connection to the shore was bifurcated. To the right, the road leveled off onto a platform built out over the lake on pilings and equipped with gates and ramps and huge bitts for mating with the ferry. To the left, the pavement just sloped straight down through the waterline. It was incised with a pair of deep straight channels hardened with iron rails. These ran obliquely up across the road to a broad open lot off to the side of the waiting area, surrounded by equipment sheds with heavy lifting equipment and other gear: a maintenance yard, she supposed, for the ferries, which could be winched straight up out of the water on those rails and brought to dry dock on higher ground. She got a reasonably good look at the place out the RV’s windows because that was where Jones got the gigantic vehicle turned around in a long series of back-and-forths. Meanwhile, Abdul-Wahaab—who had been driving the Suburban—had stopped it in the middle of the ramp, nose aimed down toward the water. He had rolled down all of the windows, opened the sunroof, and parted the rear cargo doors, which he now seemed to be wedging open with a stick. She could not see into it from this distance, but she had a good idea as to its contents. In the time she had spent in this bedroom, she had seen copious evidence—in the form of family photographs, toiletries, denture-soaking equipment, and knickknacks—that this RV was owned by a retired couple whose corpses were now in the back of that Suburban.
Having finished his preparations, Abdul-Wahaab made one last orbit around the big SUV, inspecting his work, then reached into the open driver’s-side door. Zula heard a distant thunk as he released the parking brake. The Suburban began to roll forward down the ramp. He walked, then ran alongside, keeping his right hand on the steering wheel, then peeled away from it just before it nosed into the water. It lost most of its velocity in the first few yards, plashing up a concentric wave that spread out into the lake, but it never stopped moving. Air burbled up out of the engine compartment. It slid forward into the lake, instantly filling with water, and disappeared, leaving a trail of bubbles that slowly moved away from shore as the vehicle found its way down to the lake bottom. The terrain all around was rocky and steep, and Zula had no doubt that the bottom dropped away precipitously beyond the end of the paved ferry-ramp. The lake must be a hundred meters deep, and the Suburban would come to rest at the very bottom of it.
Jones pulled out of the maintenance yard and got the RV pointed uphill. Abdul-Wahaab stormed in through the side door to accept the enthusiastic congratulations and prayerful thanks of his colleagues. Abdallah Jones steered the RV out onto the open highway, turned on the headlamps, and proceeded in some random direction at, Zula guessed, a speed well within the posted limits.
Day 10
“I mean, did you see what happened to those three thousand K’Shetriae, beginning of this week?” Richard asked.
Skeletor quickly averted his gaze and pretended to study the pattern of the red Formica tabletop.
Richard continued, “The ones who tried to go in and establish some kind of order in the Torgai Foothills?”
“I know the ones you’re talking about.” Devin Skraelin shook his head and gazed moodily out the window of the trailer. Apparently as a result of Richard’s ducking into this place a week ago, fleeing from Devin’s staff like a camper trying to get in out of the mosquitoes, it had now become the unofficial Dodge/Skeletor meeting place, a Reykjavik or a Panmunjom. It had only been a week since that meeting, and yet it seemed a lot longer. Hell, it seemed to have happened in some parallel universe. The universe in which Zula had not yet disappeared.
“I was there for some of it,” Devin said, snapping Richard’s mind back—if not to reality, then from reality. “Just hovering, invisible.” He wanted Richard to understand that he had not wielded any of his characters’ superamazing powers to sway the battle. “It was carnage, no doubt about it. Not what we—what they—expected.”
“You can say ‘we,’” Richard said quickly. He held up his hands, palms out. “I am so far past the point of thinking that the writers have to be these, like, neutral, dispassionate forces in the world.”
Skeletor was nodding, like he’d been wondering for years when Richard was finally going to get it. “It just doesn’t work,” he said. “We already talked about Good versus Evil and how that failed.”
“Totally ridiculous,” Richard said, as if it were some huge admission. “Just a weak effort on our part. ‘How can we get two groups fighting, competing? I know, we’ll have one group be Good and one Evil.’ Exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to come out of a corporate committee.”
Skeletor was just nodding, still mostly gazing out the window but occasionally flicking his eyes back Richard’s way, perhaps looking for signs of sarcasm.
“We should have just left it to you guys,” Richard concluded.
“The way I see it, it’s really a sport,” Devin said. “Maybe not like soccer, but like some combination of fencing and chess. Now, it has to be story driven, of course.” He held up his hand like a pupil volunteering to erase the chalkboard. “Happy to help out there.”
In exchange for vast sums of money, Richard mentally added. But he just kept nodding. Looking interested. As if there were any doubt as to what would come next.
Devin continued, “But in the end if you don’t have that competitive element, you’ve got nothing, business-wise. And for those who want solo questing and one-on-one competition, it’s there. You can do that. But the real attraction is in the team sport angle, the social thing. Being part of an army. An alliance.”
“Wearing a uniform,” Richard said. “Having a mascot.”
“Yeah, and that is what the Bright versus Earthtone thing turned into. Whether we intended it or not.” Devin was being a bit slippery there. A week ago Richard would have been furious at his treachery, at this blithe admission. Devin might even have sensed this, the potential for an explosion, and declined to reveal what he had just now come out and said so baldly. Now he’d said it because he could sense somehow that Richard didn’t actually give a shit. Richard had moved on.
“I just came from Cambridge,” Richard said.
“Mass?”
“England. Where Donald lives half the time.”
“Ah.”
“I want you to know that he’s fine with all of this.”
It seemed pretty clear that Devin had not been expecting this turn in the conversation, and he got a preoccupied look about him.
“He’s a quick study. You think I’m joking. But no. For a guy who has never played a video game in his life—”
“Donald Cameron has his own character in the world now!?” Skeletor exclaimed, in somewhat the same tone of voice as a tribune might have said, Hannibal has crossed the Alps with elephants!?
“Very weak, of course,” Richard said reassuringly. “Didn’t even have shoes, for a while.”
“I don’t care about what he’s wearing on his feet! I care about his—”
“Vassal tree? Yes. I understand. He’s not quite as quick to get going on that front as you’d imagine. Still learning the ropes. I explained how it all works. He was reluctant to swear fealty to a more established character.”